Practical Magic | How to Make Aligned Decisions
Overwhelmed by too many options? Try using this 2-question decision-making tool.
How to Make Aligned Decisions
Do you feel overwhelmed by all of the options available to you? Choosing between projects, jobs, or places to live? Decision paralysis, right? Well, then today's Practical Magic episode is for you.
This 2-question decision-making tool honours both rational logic and body-based intuition so you can make decisions from a place of calm alignment.
Remember that having an excess of choice is a new phenomenon. It wasn't that long ago that our ancestors had few choices as to what job they did, who they worked with, who they partnered with, where they lived, and even how they spent their time from week to week. We need to have compassion for ourselves that we're dealing with a situation that our human brains and emotional systems were not designed to deal with. We haven't evolved to be able to cope with an excess of choice.
In addition, we live in a culture of toxic productivity, capitalism, scarcity, and urgency that internalizes these beliefs in us. That, ‘if we don't do something now, we'll never get that chance again.’ And this is just not true.
By understanding that we are cyclical beings who live through seasons and sequences and that there is a right time and a worse time for everything, we can hold a space for something and not chase after it instantly. We can trust that when the timing is right, we’ll know it's time to put our energy fully into that thing.
A Simple 2-Question Decision-Making Framework
When you have too many options on the table, ask yourself:
Question 1: What am I optimizing for?
Think about deep, holistic goals or areas of focus in your life right now.
Are you optimizing for financial stability?
Are you optimizing for creative evolution, experiments, and risk-taking?
Are you optimizing for relationship building, meeting new people, and collaborations?
Are you optimizing for calm and rest?
Are you optimizing for getting pushed out of your comfort zone?
Are you optimizing for opportunities that allow you to spend more time on something else?
Once you know what your holistic goal is, hold that in mind.
When choosing one optimization, it has to be one. It doesn't have to be this one for the rest of your life or for the rest of the month. But for this framework to work, pick one.
This question is key because to live a truly aligned life, you want all of your newest, most energy-intensive commitments to be leading you towards a holistic goal, especially if you're doing multiple things simultaneously. When you leverage your effectiveness, you can start to take on more without a greater cost to other areas of your life.
Question 2: What feels most alive right now?
Write a list of all the possible options and notice how you feel.
How does your body react?
Where is there energy?
Where does your body expand?
Where do you get excitement, sensations, or fluttering?
What are the projects or ideas that you can’t stop thinking about?
We hunt for life because if we use only logic to make all of our decisions, we may end up following paths that seem sensible but feel really bad or dead. It’s hard to be effective when something feels bad or dead.
The second reason we hunt for life is that it's hard for an idea, project, or commitment to hold your attention for long if there is no life in it. Without life, we’re easily distracted, we pick up other ideas and projects, and we soon find ourselves spinning too many plates and are back to a place of decision paralysis.
The life, the energy that you feel in your body when you think about something you want to pursue, is so precious because that energy is going to fuel you as you start this endeavor.
What if Your Answers Are Polar Opposites?
If you find that what you're optimizing for and what feels most alive are polar opposites, that's okay. It’s useful information. This shows a place to create balance; a place where there is resistance.
Now you can get creative and figure out a way to honour both needs.
How can you honour your need and desire to optimize for one thing?
How can you honour your need and desire to act from what feels most alive?
If you’re looking for a way to move forward with a decision that has come out of using this framework, I suggest that you listen to Episode 20, Be More Scientist. In this episode, I break down how to create an experiment like a scientist; to give enough containment to commit to something for a set timeframe so that you can analyze if it’s working for you or not. If it isn't working, come back to this framework and repeat the process.
We Live In Cycles and Spirals
Human life is not linear.
I use this process a lot, almost unconsciously now.
I use this framework whenever I enter a new season and I plan how I want to spend my time and work with the universal energies.
I use this framework when deciding between projects or collaborations, where to go on holiday, or how to spend my weekend.
It's a highly universal framework.
It balances both rational logic and intuition and honours both mind and body. It allows us to operate from an aligned place with no denial, repression, or blindness.
Time, human life, and our experience are not linear no matter how much we try and make it so. We live in cycles and spirals. The cycles are layered on top of each other, so we often come back to the same place but from a different vantage point. This means there's no such thing as a missed opportunity. We continue to go round and round and we have time to figure out what the perfect sequencing is.
This is why being able to gauge the right time and worse time to do something is such an enormous part of what I teach.
So go ahead, try it. If you have a decision to make and there are multiple options, try this framework.
What am I optimizing for right now? Pick one thing.
What feels most alive? Where is there a lot of energy and how can I use that energy to work towards my optimization?
Listen to the Full Episode:
Episode Resources:
EP 20. Seeing Magic | Be More Scientist
If this tool works for you, let me know – send me a DM on Instagram – I would love to hear from you.
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